Musings by the Campfire
by Lorango
Summary: Our hero looks back to a more than usually eventful day. Discontinued until further notice.
1. Chapter 1

**This is, as some of you might have figured out, my first fic, so constructive criticism is welcome.  
I might add another chapter to this. Dunno when, or even if I will, but I have a few ideas that I'd like to try out.  
Lastly, sorry about the sucky title, but I never really made one for this. I was just bored and started writing.**

**Fable: Musings by the Campfire**

* * *

He had often wondered about what had gone through Maze's head when the old hero had taken him in. Maze could easily have let the bandits kill him, yet he had intervened, saved the life of some boy that meant nothing to him. 

Oh, Maleficus had no love for Maze, but it had always been something to ponder about during the innumerable late nights by the equally innumerable campfires.

Yet, this night, as he sat looking into the depths of the fire as he had so many times before, he felt that he understood the old hero's actions a little bit more.

Looking back on the life he had led after leaving the Guild of Heroes, he could see that there would be no salvation in the afterlife for him. Stealing what he needed and wanted, killing people for looking at him in a funny way, for money, for _fun_. There were few crimes he hadn't committed and half the time the guards had to make up new charges for crimes thought impossible by man. He was wanted over most of Albion on the charges of General Violence, Wilful Sinfulness and Loitering With Malicious Intent.

Even so, he hadn't killed Whisper in the Arena and he had cast away the Sword of Aeons, sparing his sister's life. He had made sure that no one knew of the latter and they still hadn't found all the pieces of the man that had gloated over the former. Maleficus considered these two acts of Mercy to be his lifeline, because deep down in his soul, the bound and gagged being that was his conscience still made the occasional squeal and reminded him that he could quit Evil anytime he wanted to. Yeah, he could quit all this if he wanted to, sure, anytime he wanted, no problem. And earlier today, he had been reminded again.

* * *

It was early morning, birds chirped joyously, diverse fauna stood about and looked insufferably cute with large watery eyes. Maleficus were restraining himself from wasting his arrows. Barely. 

The bandits he had dragged along with him were laughing at some crude and not very clever joke. The group stood a bit behind the limit between a small town and the surrounding forrest. Apart from thinking themselves witty, the bandits were checking their gear and talking about what they would to with their share of the loot. Maleficus stood a bit away from them and were dragging a whetstone along one of his horns; he had recently discovered the joys of headbutting.

He leant slightly on his Master Axe, the ancient weapon had been thoroughly tainted with demonic runes and the dried blood of many a priest of Avo. The weapon still gave of an almost regal aura of lawfulness though, much to his annoyance, but it would soon be drenched in the blood of innocents yet again, and would for a short while look grimmer than any obsidian weapon. The thought cheered Maleficus immensely.

Testing the tips of his horns with a finger, he turned to the bandits and cleared his throat loudly, bringing an end to the bandits' daydreaming of future riches, and gave the order to move out.

It was later, the annoying birdsong had died away as the villagers' screams had started and the nauseatingly cute forest animals were no doubt far away, but Maleficus, who was now out of arrows, knew that scavengers would soon replace them. There hadn't been much resistance and the battle had soon slipped over into a massacre that was still going on.

Maleficus and one of the bandits were riffling through the possessions of the man now lying on the floor next to parts of his own torso; Maleficus had left his axe in the bits still attached. They had just found the silverware and was tossing it all into a bag.

That was when the two of them had heard the sobs. They weren't loud sobs, but they could still be heard over the screams for mercy in the distance. Maleficus turned to the bandit, who himself were looking to the space under the stairs where the sobs originated from, he was leering. Without a word the bandit drew a serrated knife from his belt and moved towards a little girl who looked at the body on the floor. Maleficus finally tore his eyes from the waif and instead directed his gaze to the bandit who was still approaching the child.

The scene was all to familiar to Maleficus. It was embarrassingly familiar.

Something in Maleficus went 'click' and Maleficus knew what would be the smart thing to do.

As if he were ashamed, Maleficus lowered his head. Then, with a glint in the eye and a grin of grim determination, he charged.

Today, he figured, were not a day for doing smart things.

* * *

"Mister, I'm hungry." The child broke the silence that had been reigning between the two since Maleficus had saved her. 

"See if it's done now," he said and handed her some of the meat that had been roasting on the fire. She took it and started to eat, resuming the silence and looking at him with a scared, yet slightly accusing expression.

The child weren't exactly good at it, but Maleficus knew where it came from and directed his eyes elsewhere.

Wherever Maze was now, he was probably sniggering at Maleficus, he was sure of it, but the fact that Maze had been lucky was something Maleficus had realized early on. Maze had brought him to the Guild of Heroes where there were others to take care of him.

The Guild of Heroes still existed, but not in the same shape as before.

What little that had escaped the destruction of Jack of Blades attack Maleficus had put a torch to later on. The Guild of Heroes weren't an option anymore for the orphans of Albion and he couldn't just hand the girl over to someone. Maleficus' conscience, now unbound and ungagged again, had shot down that idea even as it formed.

No, this girl was going to be a hero, even if he had to train her himself. How didn't matter, nor did why or where, she was going to be a hero, even if it killed him. Actually, it would kill him to train her, in the long run at least, but that was a matter for another day.

Maleficus smiled and cut himself some meat, which he popped into his mouth.

"You could have told me that the meat was inedible, you know."

"Sorry, mister."


	2. Chapter 2

**The story will continue and it will do so for two more chapters.  
I would also like to mention that yes, I am aware of the various grammatical errors in this chapter. As it turns out, I suck at proof-reading my own stuff.  
I will now haste to finish the next chapter! (Read: expect it sometime in 2007. Maybe.)**

* * *

In a clearing in a forest there stands a very young girl, not even nine or ten years old yet.

Last night when the horned man and the bandit had come into her uncle's house and slaughtered Uncle she had been afraid and hid under the stairs.

When the bandit saw her she had been afraid and had closed her eyes.

When she had been sitting like that under the staircase for some time she had opened her eyes. When she had seen the horned man stand over the twitching body of the bandit, his face covered in blood, bits of flesh stuck to his horns, she had been afraid.

Then the horned man had dragged her from the house and towards the forest and she had been afraid.

When the horned man had made food for her, fright had given its place to anger, but only for a while.

After the meal the horned man had started to mutter to himself, occasionally glancing at her, and she had been afraid again.

The morning after, he had taken her to the clearing, thrust a dagger into her hands, and told her that he wanted her to stab him. Now she was positively terrified.

* * *

She was sitting by the campfire, alone for the first time since the attack on the village. Maleficus had gone to look for more firewood, but he was not far away. The two times she had stood, intending use Maleficus' absence to run away, he had been there, standing a few feet from her.

He stood that way until she sat back down again. Then he went away again.

He didn't appear unless she intended to run away it seemed.

The last weeks had been very hard. Up at sunrise and to sleep by sundown, the time in between spent with training using sticks and whatever they had at hand. At dinnertime she sat by the campfire, reading slightly bloodstained books he had probably mugged a merchant for, or listening to Maleficus telling stories of his and other heroes' exploits.

Most of the time the stories devolved into tips on how to fight the creatures in the stories, like where to stab a balverine to make it back away and give you a moment of respite and what part of a hobbe's body to concentrate on bashing in.

A particularly frightening session had left her with advice on how to slice a human being's throat to make the blood spurt further than normally. For _Intimidation Purposes_ she had been told. Her goodnight stories was gruesome tales of murderers sneaking in the night and people being found in the morning, missing large chunks where vital organs had previously been. The most frightening part though was that most of the times it seemed more like reminiscing on Maleficus' part than actual storytelling.

* * *

She had been with Maleficus for over a year now. She still trained with a stick, but every now and then Maleficus took a stick of his own and attacked her without warning when she was training. He matched her speed so she would have a chance of parrying his hits, but every now and then he would speed up a little bit and force her to work even harder and faster. She worked as hard as she could and for every night she went to her bedroll sporting new welts and bruises there would be a morning when she was even more determined to avoid going to bed in the same condition.

She had given up on running away, for now at least. Last time she had tried to, she had gotten about thirty feet from the campsite before a branch had snapped back from it's bent position and smacked her down. The last she remembered before blacking out were the sound of Maleficus sniggering.

When she came to again they were at a completely different campsite.

* * *

She had been Maleficus' trainee for nearly five years now and she had learnt many things from him, she felt, but today was different. Being kept at a much shorter leash now than in the beginning, she had been simply told to meet him at the top at a nearby cliff.

Upon joining him at the top he had shown her a phial containing a golden, shimmering liquid.

"This, girl, is a Resurrection Phial," he had told her, "One of these can pull you back from the brink of death."

"Now, we're going to start with some more serious training soon, so I want you to get you used to this."

Maleficus had then thrust the phial into her hand, and before realisation even had time to register in her mind, Maleficus had picked her up by the scruff of her neck and the cliff's edge had gotten closer, until she left it behind. Then came the drop.

"And luckily for you," she had heard him call after her, "I've got a crate full of the buggers!"

* * *

When he had thrown her of the cliff, it had only been the beginning.

At first it had been easy, she realized now, just dodge an incoming blade every now and then, before continuing whatever task he had given her and everything was all right.

The last year, however, Maleficus' vileness had grown to new heights, attacking her three to four times a day using a variety of weapons or other implementations.

She had taken to wearing her cleaver at all times and never leaving her tent without at least five Resurrection Phials.

She felt like it was hopeless, although she knew that she had learnt much over the last years. Even more than she had learned before the cliff. She was somewhat proficient with a bow now, and there were even some days when she did not need all of her Resurrection phials. For all that she had learnt though, Maleficus was always one step ahead of her. Sometimes even five steps. The few times she had tried to shoot Maleficus, he had done something, and the bolts or arrows had just bounced of a blue aura that disappeared a second later. One time he had not even been looking in her direction! Although there was times when he would let her play the offensive role in their fights, she had never given him a single cut, the closest being a severed leather strap. Whenever she thought saw an opening and went for it, Maleficus' sword would come out of nowhere and she would have to back to being defensive.

Killing him as he slept had been a total failure, too. She had crept over to him in the night, once, intending to stab him as he slept. She was not completely sure of what had happened, but she had first felt like she had run into a tree, before she woke up in one a few feet away.

It was not all training or chores though. Sometimes, when Maleficus sacks of stolen gold was near the point of bursting and their clothes was no longer cloth, but rather stitches held together by more stitches, they would travel to whatever town was nearby. Maleficus would terrorize her before entering town and tell her about the fates of the town's inhabitants, should she feel the urge to do something silly. He enforced this by doing small things when she had to talk to someone, like clearing his throat, spitting on the ground or casting around meaningful looks. He made her keep silent about certain topics merely by existing. Maleficus called the whole ordeal of going to these towns as privilegies.

She rose from the campfire and looked around. Maleficus was nowhere near, as usual for this part of the day, he was probably of mugging some poor trader.

She ran for the tree line, no Maleficus in sight yet.

For about two minutes she only ran and cast frightened eyes around her.

It was not the first time she had gotten this far, but now it seemed like there was no traps. At this point usually she would have dodged at least four traps before Maleficus caught her.

Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

This, however, was only an abstract thought she experienced as something did go wrong and she found herself in free fall into a deep pit, landing on her back.

"Well, well, well," she heard an all to familiar voice say before a head peeked over the edge of the pit.

"It's you again," Maleficus said in the joking tone of a fisherman who had caught one to many of the same type of fish.

The words she let slip cost her quite a few privileges, but it was worth it.

* * *

It was times like these she really wondered why they did not have a tent.

This morning she had woken up in a new campsite again. It was not out of the normal, really. Whenever she felt that she began to know her way around an area, she would wake up in a new location the morning after. It had happened often, so it was no longer something that bothered her.

This time however, she felt that Maleficus had gone to far tough, when she woke up to a snow-covered landscape. She had gone to bed in a summer landscape, no less!

And Maleficus? The bastard knew she was cold, and was walking around in only his pants, just to get rise out of her!

She could see that the cold got to him too however, as he was not getting any younger.

In general, he was still as hard and immovable as a rock, but she could see small signs that the years were beginning to catch up with him.

Most prominent of these was maybe his horns. In the beginning of the training, sharpening his horns had been part of his morning rituals.  
After a few years though, his morning rituals had gone from _wake up, sharpen horns, get food_, to _wake up, throw dagger at girl, get food_.

The large man that was now telling her to go get some firewood looked like something out of one of the books he had brought her when younger. With his pale, bluish skin, constant sneer, huge beard and the horns of a ram. He could easily pass for a demon.

Returning to the camp, dodging the occasional thrown knife or walking around a trip-wire or pitfall every now and again, she put more wood on the fire. Blowing carefully on the flames, trying to coax them over to the new wood, she heard a faint sound of snow moving behind her. Moving her head a few inches to the left, she narrowly avoided a club aimed at the back of her head.

It was going to be one of those days it seemed.

* * *

The two of them stood on opposite sides of a small clearing. It was autumn, with wet leaves falling all over the place, making it hard to get proper footing. It was of course the point of the whole exercise, to fight in slippery terrain.

The exercise was not about to start, but had just ended in a rather abrupt fashion. She was staring at a deep cut on Maleficus left arm, not knowing whether to apologise profusely or to cheer at herself for finally drawing his blood.

Maleficus on the other hand just touched the cut and looked on the blood on his fingers. Then, he… blurred… sort of, and before she could react she felt something strike the back of her head and all went black.


End file.
